Today's health care and benefits landscape is evolving. With rising costs and new regulatory issues, benefits administration is becoming even more of a challenge. The decisions made leading up to and during open enrollment are now more critical than ever before, requiring benefits administrators to think beyond the three-week period. It is a year-round process of comprehensive planning and communication with employees.
Fortunately there are a few tips you can follow to ease some of that burden. Here are five quick steps to a successful open enrollment:
1. Get to know your workforce. Today's workforce is more diverse than ever, but whether you are a baby boomer, Gen X or millennial we all have one thing in common: we care about our benefits. Employees are all at different stages in their life and are experiencing significant life events, which can have a big impact on benefits selection. Some employees may be looking to start a family, while others are planning for retirement — in each of these scenarios selecting the right benefits is essential. With that in mind, you can deploy additional resources and decision support tools to help employees plan ahead.
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Effectively communicating the importance of different coverage options and their financial impact is also significant. Knowing who your employees are can help your team understand key priorities and preferences when determining goals for open enrollment.
2. Identify process improvements. Take a moment to evaluate how open enrollment went last year. What were your biggest challenges? Did you get any feedback from employees? How can this year be different? Asking yourself some of these questions can help determine what improvements can be made the next time around — ultimately saving you time and money.
3. Customize plan design. As benefits administrators, our ultimate goal is to help employees choose the best benefits program for them — helping them live healthier, happier lives. The variety of benefits plans that employees have to choose from can be overwhelming, but providing the right tools and information can simplify and de-stress the process.
4. Establish a communications strategy. Determining when, how and what information you communicate to your employees is critical. Plan your communications strategy early, and don't be afraid to use a combination of both traditional and non-traditional communications tactics.
While some employees prefer information on paper, others are better engaged via text or social media. We also know that customization is important, so develop tailored messaging that is specific to that enrollee. This is especially useful when a call to action is needed — the more relevant the message, the more likely people are to respond to the request.
Establishing a year-round communications and benefits education effort can help drive more informed decision making for employees. After open enrollment is complete, stay connected with employees, and gather feedback on what tactics were successful.
5. Offer alternative resources. Every company's employee base is different; therefore the resources you provide should cater to their specific needs. If you have a multilingual workforce, you may need to offer bilingual collateral or translation services. For other companies, after-hours support or telephonic enrollment can be useful tools to helping employees choose the right benefits.
If you want to ensure that employees complete their enrollment selections on time, consider instituting an incentive program. Making open enrollment a fun and fulfilling process will heighten employee engagement.
Tedious administrative tasks can often overwhelm efforts to improve employee communication and engagement during open enrollment. Employing some of these best practices will help you prioritize the implementation of strategic initiatives, and ultimately lead to an effective and efficient open enrollment.
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